Solution description

The outcome of our project is a 1 day orientation festival for high school students. It will have a number of stations corresponding to the number of faculties in the Athenaeum (approximately 11 in case of Unitn) in which quick and practical activities will engage the students. They will spend time in each station and get a hint of each field of study to be able to decide how to continue their academic path. Moreover, to enhance their interst, there are Q&A area where highschool.

It is very important to make a decision based on the working possibilities, but as much as that is important it can also lead to a student drop-out. Offering a stimulating experience for different fields, even the one that seems to be far from the student perspective, can instead push someone toward the field that really interests them and suits them.

To measure the variation of the rates of satisfaction and dropout of students comparing the years with different orientation methods. In a long-term perspective we can also start monitoring the alumni rate of satisfaction for future comparison.

MAIN FEATURES RECAP:

• Department's stand with university students proposing quick and practical activities to highschool students
• Lounge-Q&A area (with univeristy students and alumni)
• Itinerant Q&A (university students/alumni that walks around and are avaiable to answer curiosities about their department)
• Food area with food trucks

Solution context

The problem we found is the way the transition between high school and university is handled: students are given a lot of information they don’t know what to do with. Orientation events are usually boring, tiring and not efficient. Students are just left alone with a bunch of leaflets and confusion. 

The challenge is to reinvent how the situation is managed, making students choice to be an informed one, and possibly giving them the chance to understand through experiences what really attracts them and stimulates them, after having explored a broad range of areas of study.

Solution target group

The target group are students in the 4th and 5th year of highschool.

Our solution will affect, in short-term, the students who will have the opportunity to have multiple experience of several different fields. This wil lead to the possibility, for the students, to take a more suitable path for their life.

Solution impact

We want to improve the rate of satisfaction and reduce the dropout of the students enrolled in the different departments, reducing the amount of students that end up studying something they don’t like; resulting in late graduation or dropout.

Long term effects will impact mostly the life of everyone because of the possible increase of average job satisfaction (which is correlated to life satisfatcion) and all the benefits that derives from that.

Solution tweet text

A new way to help students decide for their future! UNIREAL is a local festival where highschool students can have fun while discovering new passions and interests.

Solution innovativeness

The purpose of our orientation process is to create an experience that can stimulate the interest of students: it is not just an exhibition of all the faculties but a mean to create curiosity through engaging activities. 

Students will be offered the chance to experience what will happen in university and not only read about it; their latent interests will be stimulated with brief but effective activities that have the main purpose of provoking curiosity. 

The structure and what we propose is innovative: it revolutionizes the way highschool students interact with university and how they approach it.

Solution transferability

The solution is scalable and can be inserted in many other contexts. The whole festival can be applied to mostly any university because of the few financial and space resources required. Moreover, it is possible to transfer a “light version” of the festival in common fairs such as Job&Orienta to enhance the overall experience.

Given the fact that the required financial resources are very low, it is also possible, for big cities with a lot of students, to keep this festival open for more days in order to serve the more students as possible.

Solution sustainability

We have already talked about this project with Orienta (office in Unitn) and they are willing to listen to our proposal and, maybe, organize an appointment to discuss it. Once we establish a cooperation with them, we can contact TSM (Trentino School of Management), which is already working with “alternanza scuola-lavoro”, and propose to them to integrate our festival in one of their teaching modules. Moreover, we want to propose the participation to our festival to be considered as part of the hours dedicated to the “alternanza scuola lavoro'' so that schools will be incentivized to bring the students there.

Speaking about money, it's easy, basing on the activities that are proposed, to organize the events with just the order of magnitude of thousands of euros, so it is clearly possible to sustain this kind of festival for multiple editions (also the same year) with a minimum financial effort. Moreover, the presence of the "food area" could be useful to amortize costs by renting out spaces.

Solution team work

We did really work well as a team, in a few minutes we were able to brainstorm our ideas and to be on the same page while working. Everyone participated in a very active way and each member contributed significantly. Given the fact that we all come from unitn, live in Trento, it’s extremely likely that we will still work on this project in the future.